Bumbleby - i'll rewind time for you (again and again)

Chapter 1

I couldn't imagine a lifetime without you.

That's what Yang told her; underneath the stars with no one watching, no one hiding, no words whispered among the leaves of the trees. It was the forest and them and the wind on their faces, laying side by side on the bed of her truck.

It was summer and they were free, and all they needed was each other - it was all anyone needed, really. It was something they were lucky enough to learn as early as they had - when they have a lifetime ahead of them.

In that moment - when the night was so still it was like time froze around them, Blake started to let herself believe that maybe Yang was right.

Ones not enough, but maybe two would do, don't you think?

They're 17 and in love, and suddenly the small trivial things of daily life started to fade at the edges.

High school was a tedious thing - a trite few years that could stretch into a lifetime in the right hands. Hands, that were held between classes and hidden underneath desks from prying eyes. Hands, that led you through a shortcut through the woods as you skipped class for the fourth time in a row. A love that was too shy to be admitted, too fragile to be exposed. Best friends, they'll call it; a name they can hide behind until they're a little more bold, just a tad more brave.

A name they'd been hiding behind all the way from the shy age of four.

Oh, come on. Don't be shy. I won't make fun of you, I promise. Just take my hand, I'll guide you through the movements.

Holding down a job was hard when you bounced from town to town. The wind through an open car window felt much more like freedom than zeroes on a page, and home wasn't just a door and a roof and four barren walls. Her home was a girl with untamable blonde hair that got tangled in the mornings, who liked her orange juice without any pulp, who insisted on purple toothbrushes because any other colour didn't feel quite right.

Do you believe in destiny? Like we were meant to find each other? Like this is just one life in a long line of love stories that play to the same ending, that end with the same song?

They're teenagers, hardly so. Barely more than children that outgrew their clothes too fast and found a liking to girls and boys from different classes. A stolen glance was just about all she could manage across the classroom, a daring feat that made her heart race in the middle of 7th-grade math class.

If only she'd been a little braver - there's an empty seat beside her in the cafeteria, they're matching up partners in gym. If only she'd mustered up just a sliver more confidence, if she was only able to confess that her best friend caught her attention in more ways than she could admit - maybe, just maybe, they would have started their story that much sooner.

I'll never leave you, I'll build a time machine if I have to. If that's what it takes. Hey, stop laughing, I'm serious here.

Sunshine and lavender and all things citrus went hand-in-hand with dust through a broken window and a crackly old radio that played nothing but the old hits. It was a lifetime they wanted, and a lifetime they got.

Maybe ones not enough, maybe not even two. But tomorrow is a century away and your heart can swell so much it threatens to burst, so you manage, somehow.

They survive, for better or worse, with each other or apart. You can run away, but you cannot hide - but sometimes, the journey ends up better than the price you pay for leaving everything behind.